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SSL’s New C100 Digital Production Consoles Make Italian Debut
As part of its progression from analogue to digital technology, TV broadcast production and post production specialist Videotime has become the first company in Italy to invest in Solid State Logic’s C100 digital production consoles.
Videotime, which belongs to the Mediaset group of companies, has three main production centres located in Milan and Rome, from which it provides a range of broadcast services and technical equipment to Mediaset’s three broadcast channels, Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4. The various facilities employ over 200 people and incorporate 10 studios, two OB vans, six graphics studios and 24 editing rooms.
Videotime has installed two C100 consoles in recently refurbished studios in its Entertainment Production Centre in Milan. The consoles will be on air by the end of August and will be used for a variety of programming including sports events, live shows, sit-coms, reality shows, talk shows and productions for satellite thematic channels. All of these are broadcast in either stereo or 5.1 formats.
Alfredo Trusiani, Videotime’s technical manager, says: “Over the last four years Videotime has been developing plans to migrate its studios from analogue to digital technology. We are introducing new digital editing standards, a digital newsroom, new automatic playout systems with facilities for advertisement insertion and a new digital archive system. As part of this process we have completely refurbished two studios in our main building in Milan and have chosen Solid State Logic C100 consoles for these control rooms.”
Videotime’s decision to buy C100 consoles was based on a number of factors, not least the good experiences it has had with SSL products in the past.
Trusiani explains: “We already have six SSL Aysis Air digital consoles and we are very happy with them, but for our new studios we wanted something even more flexible so we conducted extensive research and demoed a number of different manufacturers’ products. The C100 came out ahead because it was the only product that had a very similar operational approach to our existing consoles. This meant that the transition from one desk to another was relatively straightforward for our operators.”
Trusiani adds that the C100 was particularly popular with Videotime’s audio engineers who tested it meticulously found it to be flexible and forward thinking in both its overall design and its operational interface.
“The C100’s features and operational facilities make this a good audio mixer for both studio generated television programmes and live transmissions,” Trusiani adds. “It is also a very compact console, which suited the size of our control rooms. And it’s quick and easy to use, which helps with operational turnover. This may be our first experience of SSL’s new C Series technology but we feel confident that it will prove to be just as satisfying as the Aysis Air consoles, with which we are already familiar.”
30th September 2004
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